Environmental pollution kills more people than wars, disasters, and hunger

Environmental pollution — from filthy air to contaminated water — is killing more people every year than all war and violence in the world. More than smoking, hunger, or natural disasters. More than AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria combined.

One out of every six premature deaths in the world — about 9 million in 2015 — could be attributed to disease from toxic exposure.

The financial cost from pollution-related death, sickness, and welfare is equally massive — costing some $5.9 trillion in annual losses, or about 6.2 per cent of the global economy.

Forests give clean water, and clean water gives life

Rainforests act like giant sponges that absorb rainfall. Some of it supplies the forest with life-giving water, some is recycled into the atmosphere, and some is released into streams and rivers in a remarkably clean state — but also much more slowly than would happen if it ran off barren land.

Thus, the forests clean our water and help us to manage it by reducing the need for storage and filtration, as well as mitigating flooding.

Without forest cover on water catchments, more water would run off during rainy periods, carrying huge loads of sand and silt scraped off the unprotected land. Then, without the “sponge” to hold any of it back, much less would be available to be released naturally during dry periods.

We would then need an overall greater capacity for water storage. This would coincide with our expensive reservoirs filling up with sand and silt, giving rise to the need to clean them out or to build more reservoirs.

At the same time, we would also need a lot more investment in filtration and other water-treatment systems.

In short, we would have to manage an unending challenge of floods, droughts, and sediment that would impact severely on lives and property. Their overall costs would be huge.